Grab a Snake by the Tail E-Book

Leonardo Padura

• Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Mario Conde investigates a murder in the Barrio Chino, the rundown Chinatown of Havana. Not his usual beat, but when Conde was asked to take the case by his colleague, the sultry, perfectly proportioned Lieutenant Patricia Chion, a frequent object of his nightly fantasies, he couldn't resist. The case proves to be unusual. Pedro Cuang, a lonely old man, is found hanging naked from a beam in the ceiling of his dingy room. One of his fingers has been amputated and a drawing of two arrows was engraved with a knife on his chest. Was this a ritual Santería killing or a just a sordid settling of accounts in a world of drug trafficking that began to infiltrate Cuban society in the 1980s? Soon Conde discovers unexpected connections, secret businesses and a history of misfortune, uprooting and loneliness that affected many immigrant families from China. As ever with Padura, the story is soaked in atmosphere: the drinking of rum in deliciously smoke-filled bars, the friendships, the food and beautiful women.

Leseprobe

Leonardo Padura was born in Havana in 1955 and lives there with his wife Lucía. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, one collection of essays and a volume of short stories. His Havana series crime novels featuring the detective Mario Conde, published in English by Bitter Lemon Press, have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world. Padura’s recent novels, The Man Who Loved Dogs and Heretics, have cemented his position among the best authors in world literature. In Grab a Snake by the Tail, Padura returns to his roots as a crime writer, taking his hero, Police Lieutenant Mario Conde, into the dark and dangerous streets of the Barrio Chino, Havana’s Chinatown.

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GRAB A SNAKE BY THE TAIL

Leonardo Padura

Translated by Peter Bush

BITTER LEMON PRESSLONDON

BITTER LEMON PRESS

First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by

Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London WC1X 0ET

www.bitterlemonpress.com

First published in Spanish as La cola del serpiente by

Tusquets Editores, S.A., Barcelona, 2011

Bitter Lemon Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Arts Council of England

© Leonardo Padura, 2011

English translation © Peter Bush, 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of Leonardo Padura and Peter Bush have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Paperback ISBN 978–1–912242–17-7

Ebook: ISBN 978–1–912242–18-4

Typeset by Tetragon, London

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

To Lydia Cabrera, for the ngangas.

To Francisco Cuang, for San Fan Con.

To Lucía, who understands me even when I speak in chino.

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

A chino fell down a well,

his insides turned to water…

CUBAN NURSERY RHYME

Author’s Note

In 1987, when I was working as a journalist on the evening paper Juventud Rebelde [Rebel Youth], I carried out detailed research in order to write an article on the history of Havana’s Barrio Chino. That text, titled ‘Barrio Chino: The Longest Journey’, soon became the subject of a short film documentary (El viaje más largo, directed by Rigoberto López), and the articles I wrote for that newspaper and which I published in book form in 1995 shared their names with the documentary.

The mysteries of the Barrio Chino and its history of loyalty to and uprooting of specific traditions had intrigued me so much that – after I’d created the character of Mario Conde and published his first two stories, Pasado Perfecto (1991) [Havana Blue, 2007] and Vientos de cuaresma (1993) [Havana Gold, 2008], I wrote a piece of fiction set in that neighbourhood of Havana. The short story also features Conde as its main character, but from a literary point of view it falls outside the four novels that comprise the Havana quartet, which was completed in the following years with Máscaras (1997) [Havana Red, 2005] and Paisaje de otoño (1998) [Havana Black, 2006].

However, I never felt the story was finished until, after I’d completed and published the last volume of the quartet, I decided to go back and transform it into a novella. As with all of Conde’s adventures, what is narrated is fiction, though there is a strong element of reality. Here, behind the police business that pulls Mario Conde towards the Barrio Chino, is the history of an uprooting I have always felt very moving: that of the Chinese who came to Cuba (originally with labour contracts that almost reduced them to a state of slavery), similar to so many economic migrants in today’s world. Loneliness, contempt and uprooting are then the subject of this story that didn’t really take place, but could quite easily have done.

The novella, written in 1998, was published in Cuba – where the opportunities to publish must be grasped whenever and however they appear – as a companion to another volume, Adiós, Hemingway.

Twelve years later, when I finally decided to hand over La cola de la serpiente to my Spanish publishers, the fate of this text underwent another twist: it was clear the plot’s treatment was too restrictive, while several characters and situations needed greater development and the writing loosening up so it would be more in line with other works featuring Mario Conde as hero.

What you are about to read is the result of this new and, I hope, last rewrite of a story that, over fifteen years, has pursued me until it became this short novel which, I repeat, I hope has finally found its definitive form. In the end, perhaps it couldn’t have happened differently, since, when writing this last version, I realized that possibly none of the Chinese community whose lives and fates inspired this work are left in Havana.

Mantilla, January 2011

1

From the moment he started to reason and learn about life, as far as Mario Conde was concerned, a chino had always been what a chino ought to be: an individual with slanted eyes and skin which, despite its jaundiced yellow colour, was able to withstand adversity. A man transported by life’s challenges from a place as mythical as it was remote, a misty land amid tranquil rivers and impregnable, snow-peaked mountains, lost in the heavens; a country rich in legends about dragons, wise mandarins and subtle sages with good advice on every subject. Only several years later did he learn that a chino, a genuine, real chino, must also be a man capable of conceiving the most extraordinary dishes a civilized palate dare savour. Quails cooked in lemon juice and gratinéed with a ginger, cinnamon, basil and cabbage sauce, say. Or pork loin sautéed with eggs, camomile, orange juice and finally browned slowly in a bottomless wok, over a layer of coconut oil.

However, according to the limited ideas that derived from Conde’s historical, philosophical and gastronomic prejudices, a chino might also be a lean, affable character ever ready to fall in love with mulatto and black women (provided they were within reach), and puff on a long, bamboo pipe with his eyes shut and, naturally, the laconic kind who utters the minimum words possible in that singsong, palatal language they employed when speaking the languages other people speak.

“Yes, a chino is all that,” he muttered after a moment’s thought, only to conclude, after longer ruminations, that such a character was simply the standard chino, constructed by stereotypical Western thinking. Even so, Conde found it such an appealing, harmonious synthesis he wasn’t too concerned if that familiar, almost bucolic image would never have meant a thing to a real live chino, let alone to someone who didn’t know and, naturally, had never enjoyed the good fortune to taste the dishes cooked by old Juan Chion, the father of his friend Patricia, who was directly to blame for the fact that Conde had now been forced to reflect on his poor level of knowledge of the cultural and psychological make-up of a chino.